With the cost of living being as it is, being mindful of spending and savings habits are much more routine for many of us.

Understanding the factors that can improve your credit score and maintaining good financial habits can impact how much you spend on big ticket items like a home or a car.

I sat down with a credit repair specialist, Armin Hutchins, president and CEO of Prosper, Kentucky, to learn more.

So credit scores are interesting because there are numbers, right?

They range from anywhere from 300 to 850.

Anything below succeeds.

Consider poor credit scores.

682 742 good credit scores.

742 800 It's very good and then 800 to 850.

It's exceptional credit score.

So it's important that we have a good credit.

Credit is so important because it gives you so many opportunities of saving saving money.

Because if you have good credit scores, you can have so many things that you couldn't have otherwise, like applying for great credit cards or credit cards that gives you rewards like cash back or travel points or having excellent mortgage interest rate for your loan, because for a long term, most mortgages run anywhere from 15 to 30 years.

For a long term.

You could lose so much money when your interest is not where you want it to be.

Therefore, having good credit scores gives you quite a huge financial savings.

So when we think about that 850 max, that's the exceptional mark, right?

I had hundred to 886.

800 to 850.

How do you get there?

How did those people land right there in that really optimal range?

It's quite work, but it's possible.

Obviously, there are many people in the US that have 800 and above credit scores, so there are many factors that affect on credit scores.

What are they?

One your payment history.

A responsible payment history is extremely essential for having good credit scores.

Often people miss credit card payments for for many variety of reasons for losing good job or having medical debt or having other debts that they cannot manage very well.

And then they miss credit card payment.

Credit card.

When you miss credit card payment or your loan payment or goods, car loan, personal loan or mortgage payment, that's 35% affect on your credit scores.

So responsible payment history is number one affect on your credit scores.

Then other factors affect on credit scores, such as credit utilization.

Often we have good credit limits.

But then how do you spend?

You should never or more than 30% of your credit limit every month.

You need a good payment history.

Again, we come back to a good payment history.

Then there are many other factors, such as credit mix, because often people complain that they do not have good credit scores.

And here is why.

Because you don't have a good credit mix.

What does that mean?

Credit mix is like you may only have one student loan, therefore your scores are not going grow.

Healthy credit mix is very important for our credit scores.

Credit mix means credit cards, loans.

It could be personal loans, car loans or mortgages and student loans.

Those are I consider, as I always talk with my clients, credit scores consist of positive and negative ingredients.

Therefore, those are your positive ingredients.

Those are credit cards, right?

Utilization of credit cards, loans that payments are done in time on monthly term.

And I mean, loans could be personal car and mortgages.

The negative ingredients are on credit scores.

That brings your scores down.

Those are collections.

Those are late payments.

When you are late on your credit card or on your mortgage or loan, mortgage loan or car loan or personal loan.

Late payments are vicious on your credit score.

Those could drop your credit scores.

Then collections.

If you don't take responsibility of your medical bills, medical hospitals or clinics, they will soon to collection.

Prior to that, that will never appeared on your credit scores because medical facilities hospitals are claims they do not report to credit bureaus to Equifax, TransUnion or Experian.

But once it goes to collection, it shows to your credit report, therefore, your score scores down.

We'll have much more from our media and our future broadcast of Kentucky edition as she talks about repairing less than desired credit and the disconnect between wealth and good credit.